Literary Pursuits

Recently, I participated in a fun project for the Phoenix APA with my Phellow Pheeners JK Parkin and Greta Northrup. The idea was that each of us would write the beginning of a story -- I believe the theme was simply that the first chapter should involve a character getting a letter with important news -- and then pass it off to the next person to write the middle, who would then pass it on to the final person to write the ending. (Imaginatively, we called it the "Beginning, Middle, and End" project.) The final result was three complete multi-author stories. I mention this because I see that JK has just posted the first of the three on the Phoenix website, and it happens to be the one I started: a silly space opera sort of thing which features a rather Han Solo-ish character but which was in fact almost certainly the result of me having watched one too many episodes of Firefly. I'm really pleased with this, actually, not so much because my opening chapter is anything to be particularly proud of (although I did have fun writing it), but because it was great to see Greta take the characters I'd created and flesh them out so well, and even greater when JK came along, captured the tone I was going for much better than I did, and wrapped the plotline up in a brilliant, unexpected, and very funny way.

So, anyway, for anyone who might have been wondering whether I ever write anything other than rambling blog entries... there you have it. Shrug.